Chicago Home Prices Buck the National Cooldown

Chicago’s housing market is refusing to take the hint.

While home prices across much of the country are flattening out or sliding, the Chicago area just posted the fastest price growth of any major U.S. metro, highlighting the city’s durability even as buyers feel a squeeze from inflation and higher interest rates. Crain’s reported that the median home price in the Chicago region rose by 5.83 percent in October, to $365,000, from a year earlier, according to S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Indices data released Tuesday. That was the highest increase among the 19 major cities tracked in the report and more than four times the national growth rate of 1.36 percent. (Detroit was excluded this month because of incomplete data.)

The gain also comfortably outpaced inflation. While a federal government shutdown delayed a national inflation reading for October, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Chicago-area inflation of 2.9 percent in September and 2.5 percent in November, putting local home price growth at roughly twice the pace of rising consumer prices.

It marked the second consecutive month Chicago topped the Case-Shiller leaderboard. In September, prices were up 5.45 percent year over year, again roughly four times the national increase, according to the index.

Nicholas Godec, head of fixed income tradables and commodities at S&P Dow Jones Indices, said in a statement that Chicago now leads all major markets, breaking with a slight decline in inflation-adjusted home values over the past year nationally.

The broader picture shows just how much Chicago is swimming against the current. According to the index, home prices fell in nine of the 19 cities tracked in October and were essentially flat in four others. Tampa posted the steepest annual drop, down 4.17 percent. New York was the next-strongest major market after Chicago, with prices up 4.95 percent, followed by Cleveland at 4.06 percent.

A year ago, Chicago was rising quickly but not wildly out of step with the nation. In October 2024, prices here were up 6.24 percent year over year, compared to a national gain of 3.6 percent. Since then, growth elsewhere has cooled sharply. Nationwide price growth is now running at about 62 percent of its pace a year ago, while Chicago’s is still at roughly 93 percent.

The resilience traces back to the pandemic boom, when Chicago never fully joined the froth. At the peak in October 2021, local prices were up 11.5 percent annually — the slowest growth among the 20 Case-Shiller cities — while places like Phoenix surged more than 30 percent.

— Eric Weilbacher